This blog on Texas education contains posts on accountability, testing, college readiness, dropouts, bilingual education, immigration, school finance, race, class, and gender issues with additional focus at the national level.

WEST PALM BEACH – Motivation and passion are the key to success, according to Apple Computers co-founder Steve Wozniak. The
Silicon Valley icon was the guest of honor at Palm Beach State
College’s STEAM Initiative launch Jan. 31 at the Kravis Center in
downtown West Palm Beach.

During the event titled “A Conversation With Steve Wozniak,” Wozniak fielded pre-selected questions from the
capacity audience of more than 650 ranging from the future of technology
and advice for young people to his thoughts on the death of his best
friend and Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.

Palm Beach
State College President Dennis Gallon said Wozniak was the perfect
person to help kick off the five-year STEAM Initiative which focuses on
STEM fields or studies in science, technology, engineering and
mathematics, adding arts to the core, because technology is growing at
such a rate that the need to fill jobs in those areas will exceed the
available trained professionals.

College spokeswoman Grace Truman said the arts were added because they accentuate the other areas of study.

“STEM is certainly a very critical area but the arts contribute so much to technology, to engineering,”
she said. “The arts kind of infuse all of the other disciplines. So we
really felt it was important to include the arts in this initiative.”

Wozniak
seemed to support that theory, crediting Jobs with packaging and
marketing strategies that helped make Apple a leading competitor in
computer technology worldwide.

Wozniak also acknowledged a cultural evolution has taken place in technological studies.

“When I went
to college, the people from the Far East were brought up with strong
mathematical training,” he said. “The students in the computer
engineering classes were three-fourths from the Asian countries and they
were 50/50 female-male (ratio).” Almost all the American students were
white males, he added.

College Dean
Leonard Bruton said certain programs are geared for minority students
who study science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

“There are initiatives and scholarships that are available to minorities in these STEM areas,” he said.

Wozniak said diversity – people getting along and understanding each other – is a wonderful thing in life.

“Everywhere I
go I see people of many ethnic backgrounds, males and females, making
the same good use of our technology as others,” the technology pioneer
said. “The only place where I see a divergence is maybe in who runs
companies or engineers (who) are more likely to be males.”

Provost
Bernadette Russell, from the college’s Boca Raton campus, said she is
working to recruit minorities and women for STEM studies so they can be
connected with businesses for internships to help further their careers.

“Some
businesses look for students who are good in mathematics, strong in the
sciences, more at a level where they can develop their skills
professionally, therefore knowing what they will major in by having the
(hands-on) experience,” she said.

Wozniak said diversity is a viable component of high-tech businesses today.

“I’ve seen
some of the people at the very top of Silicon Valley companies totally
open to African-American women and any (diverse group),” he said. “It’s
almost an advantage sometimes to find someone who you didn’t think would
be a ‘geek’ is and understands this stuff.”